Influx is an issue that has propelled several politicians to power and affluence. Such politicians don the mantle of leaders making heroic speeches and painting themselves as saviours of a pathetic, dependent, scared, useless citizenry unable to fight their own battles, afraid of competition and looking up to politicians to save them from the looming, threatening prospect of becoming a minority in their homeland. Whether this is borne out by independent research based on evidence of facts and figures and carried out by a credible institution is no one’s concern. It takes a war cry for things to start hotting up, more so during a run-up to the elections. At that time people look for saviours from their personal and economic predicaments, the solutions for which rest on effective governance. If the health and education systems are not delivering as they should, influx is not the reason. The reason is the breakdown of governance at the last mile. Lack of accountability of people entrusted with the task of making institutions work better is the problem. The weak link in the chain of governance is the absence of a tracking and monitoring process which drives non-government institutions to perform better with measurable outcomes.
Attempts by government past and present to bring the railways to the Khasi-Jaintia Hills of Meghalaya have been stymied by pressure groups of all hues and acronyms. The political system has proven to be without backbone and to acquiesce to the illogical and unreasonable demands of the sundry groups who believe that without their advocacy the people would be left helpless and hapless. In fact, such groups take root because people don’t have the courage of conviction to speak their minds where it matters – in public platforms. Hence their voice is being usurped by these pressure groups who claim to speak on behalf of the citizenry.
Influx is a problem that no less a country like the USA has had to deal very sternly with. But that’s because the USA has a robust system and well-documented evidence of illegal migrants. Those who violated the laws have been deported under very degraded circumstances. India needs to carry out the National Register of Citizens (NRC) for all states including Meghalaya to determine the number of illegal migrants living in this country and in Meghalaya and work on their deportation. Unless such steps are taken the bugbear of influx will continue to haunt this state and its people while politics will continue to be hijacked by pressure groups whose members inevitably join politics. In fact, being in a pressure group is a trajectory to politics. Very few have the courage to contest elections without the camouflage of a social worker to enter politics. The pressure group route to politics is tried and tested and has failed. People have enough wisdom to decide their own fates without surrendering their decision-making power to interest groups.